Brooklyn Law School is pleased to announce the launch of REFinblog.com, a collaborative effort between Professors Brad Borden and David Reiss and law students, focused on tracking the latest law and practice developments in the rapidly changing field of real estate finance.

REFinblog.com provides timely and indispensable insight, analysis and commentary on the latest news and cases in the real estate finance arena, with an emphasis on securitization. Currently focused on litigation arising from the 2008 financial crisis, REFinblog.com provides information about “upstream” litigation (lawsuits against underwriters, promoters, and other market actors), “downstream” litigation (bankruptcy and foreclosure cases brought by and against homeowners) as well as other timely information about related tax and regulatory actions.

Prof. David Reiss

REFinblog.com provides a well-needed service, sorting daily through dozens of industry newsletters, blogs and listservs to find relevant new cases, regulations, articles, and reports about real estate finance. The authors then identify and analyze cutting-edge issues that are addressed in those sources and synthesize them for their readers.

“Our target audience is made up of those who want more depth than they can find in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Financial Times – those who want truly expert commentary, with links to the source documents,” said Professor Borden, a noted authority on taxation of real property transactions and flow-through entities.

Professors Borden and Reiss will serve as editors of REFinblog.com, and Brooklyn Law School students will be regular contributors. Students are excited that they can provide a public service by synthesizing and analyzing these materials for readers of REFinblog.com, and making them accessible for this audience.

Having students contribute to a professionally-faced industry publication is just one of the ways that Brooklyn Law School is better equipping students with real-world lawyering and business skills that they can use in practice after graduation. “Our student authors have really risen to the occasion,” said Professor Reiss, a leading expert on the mortgage markets, ratings agencies, and housing issues. “They have taken their legal training and have applied it to this difficult area of law and public policy.”

Professor Reiss continued, “As law schools seek to reinvent themselves for the 21st Century, it is exciting to be part of an effort that is clearly Law School 2.0.”